Join us on a tour of Judson Studios to learn how stained-glass panels are made, from initial design to final stages of production, while exploring this designated Historic-Cultural landmark of Los Angeles. Tour fee $20. Open to 20 participants. Group meets at Judson Studios. Complements the exhibition Canterbury and St. Albans: Treasures of Church and Cloister.

Tours and Gallery Talks

Garden TourDaily11:30 am, 12:30 pm, 2:30 pm, 3:30 pmGetty Center

The gardens of the Getty are the focus of this 45-minute tour. Meet the docent outside
at the bench under the sycamore trees near the front entrance to the Museum.

Can love last forever? Debate this timeless question while examining Soldani-Benzi's bronze sculpture Venus and Adonis. Join the docent at the Information Desk for a 15-minute talk about this work of art.

Discover more about Richard Meier's architecture and the design of the Getty Center site in this 45-minute tour. Meet the docent outside at the bench under the sycamore trees near the front entrance to the Museum.

Explore the Getty's collection of 17th- and 18th-century art in this one-hour tour of French decorative arts, paintings, and sculpture made during the reigns of kings Louis XIV, Louis XV, and Louis XVI. Meet the docent at the Information Desk.

Exhibition Tour: Canterbury and St. Albans: Treasures from Church and CloisterTuesday - Saturday through November 27, 20131:30 pmMuseum Galleries, Getty Center

Explore masterpieces of medieval stained glass and illuminated manuscripts in this special one-hour overview of the exhibition Canterbury and St. Albans: Treasures from Church and Cloister. Meet the educator at the Information Desk.

Karen Hellman, assistant curator of photographs, the J. Paul Getty Museum, leads a gallery talk on the exhibition At The Window: the Photographer's View. Meet under the stairs in the Museum Entrance Hall.

Exhibitions

The Life of Art: Context, Collecting, and DisplayDailySouth Pavilion, Plaza Level, Getty Center

From the time an object is made until the day it enters a museum's collection, it may be displayed, used, and perceived in different ways. The Life of Art takes selected objects from the Getty Museum's galleries and encourages visitors to sit down and spend time with them, offering the opportunity to examine them closely to understand how they were made and functioned, why they were collected, and how they have been displayed. Through careful looking, what may be learned about the maker and previous owners of a French gilt-bronze wall light, for example, or the transformation in England of a Chinese porcelain bowl? Close engagement reveals the full lives of these works and why they continue to be collected and cherished today.

Canterbury and St. Albans: Treasures from Church and CloisterDaily through February 2, 2014Exhibitions Pavilion, Getty Center

This exhibition brings together masterpieces of medieval English art: panels of stained glass from Canterbury Cathedral and pages from the St. Albans Psalter, a splendidly illuminated book of psalms. Uniting monumental glass painting with the art of book illumination, this presentation reveals how specific texts, prayers, and environments shaped the medieval viewer's understanding of these pictures during the era of artistic renewal following the Norman Conquest of England.

A new acquisition by the Getty Museum's Department of Photographs, Hearsay of the Soul (2012) is a five-channel video installation by celebrated German filmmaker Werner Herzog. It combines the early-seventeenth-century landscape etchings of Dutch artist Hercules Segers with recent scores and a performance by Dutch cellist and composer Ernst Reijseger, resulting in a richly layered work that is at once intimate and epic.

Over the past twenty­five years, Abelardo Morell (American, born Cuba, 1948) has become internationally renowned for photographs that push the boundaries of the medium while exploring visual surprise and wonder. From intimate domestic scenes taken with a child's view to images in which an entire room is a camera obscura, Morell has approached picture making with remarkable creativity and wit. Showing a range of individual works and series—many never displayed before—this exhibition demonstrates how Morell has mined photographic history for inspiration. The exhibition was organized by the Art Institute of Chicago in association with the J. Paul Getty Museum and the High Museum of Art in Atlanta.

At the Window: The Photographer's ViewDaily through January 5, 2014West Pavilion, Lower Level, Getty Center

One of the first camera subjects, the window is literally and figuratively linked to the photographic process itself. This exhibition, drawn primarily from the Getty Museum's collection (including several new acquisitions funded by the Getty Museum's Photographs Council), looks at the ways photographers have explored their medium by turning to the window as a framing device or conceptual tool. It spans the history of photography, from some of the earliest images by William Henry Fox Talbot, Julia Margaret Cameron, and Eugène Atget to contemporary works by artists such as Robert Adams, Uta Barth, Gregory Crewdson, Sabine Hornig, and Yuki Onodera.

From its inception, photography has functioned as a significant tool in the documentation and perception of architecture. The camera made it possible to record the built environment with accuracy and in greater detail, allowing photographers to represent the existence of a building from construction to demise. Drawn from the J. Paul Getty Museum's collection, this exhibition surveys the history of architectural photography through images of sacred and secular structures, picturesque environments, abstracted spaces, and conceptual forms.

Throughout the Middle Ages, Christians were fascinated by stories about saints, who led extraordinary lives full of mystical events and miraculous occurrences. Saints were depicted in manuscripts experiencing revelatory visions and performing wondrous feats such as healing the sick or raising the dead. Even when their tormentors were performing exceptionally brutal acts—shooting them repeatedly with arrows, for example, or violently beheading them—martyr saints were pictured remaining steadfast in their faith. This exhibition, drawn from the Getty Museum's permanent collection, presents manuscripts that allowed medieval viewers to witness these dramatic narratives and venerate the saints as models of piety.